This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
It is good... to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ration; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.
Belief | Death | Fear | Good | Happy | Ignorance | Imagination | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | Organic | Struggle | War | Wisdom |
Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.
Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.
Experience | Fear | Mystery | Religion | Wisdom |
Peace comes only from loving, from mutual self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness. Few today have humility or wisdom enough to know the world's deep need of love. We are too much possessed by national and racial and cultural pride.
Enough | Forgetfulness | Humility | Love | Need | Peace | Pride | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Wisdom | World |
The fear of losing one's job has kept education in America fifty years behind its possible improvement.
Education | Fear | Improvement | Wisdom |
Maurice Duhamel, pen name of Maurice Bourgeaux
An Arab folk tale relates that Pestilence once met a caravan upon the desert way to Baghdad. "Why," asked the Arab chief, "must you hasten to Baghdad?" "To take five thousand lives." Pestilence replied. Upon the way back to the City of the Caliphs, Pestilence and the caravan met again. "You deceived me," the chief said angrily. "instead of five thousand lives you took fifty thousand." "Nay," said Pestilence. "Five thousand and not one more. It was Fear who killed the rest."
Fear builds prison walls around a man and bars him in with dreads, anxieties and timid doubts. Faith is the great liberator from prison walls. Fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages, fear sickens, faith heals; fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith sees beyond the horizon and rejoices in its God.
Faith | Fear | God | Heart | Life | Life | Man | Prison | Wisdom |
The fear of losing one's job has kept education in America fifty years behind its possible improvement.
Education | Fear | Improvement | Wisdom |
Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell
Most people like praise. Many people have an unreasonable fear of administering it; it is part of the puritanical dislike for anything that is agreeable - to others. When it is really deserved, most people expand under it into richer and better selves.